Series six of Peaky Blinders will air this weekend, with audiences transported back to post-war Birmingham.
The much-loved Shelby family are returning to our screens for the next instalment of the smash-hit gangster drama.
There’ll be a notable absence in season six though – Helen McCrory, who played matriarch Polly Gray, sadly died last April after a private cancer battle.
A tribute to the actor is believed to air in the season premiere this week.
Here’s what you need to know ahead of the return of Peaky Blinders.
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What is the release date for Peaky Blinders season six?
Cillian Murphy will be back in season six of Peaky Blinders. Credit: BBC
Producers finally revealed the release date for the sixth instalment of Peaky Blinders last week.
Creator Steven Knight had previously said they were aiming for a springtime release – but fans were pleasantly surprised by how early the episodes will begin.
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The release date was revealed with a huge mural painted by Manchester’s mural king and legendary street artist, Akse P19.
It’s all set to kick off on Sunday February 27 from 9pm.
It’s then set to air one episode a week at 9pm on Sundays.
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Where to watch Peaky Blinders season six
Tommy and Arthur Shelby in Peaky Blinders. Credit: BBC
Although the previous series of Peaky Blinders are all available to watch on Netflix, it won’t be the streaming platform that gets first dibs on the new episodes.
Episodes will only air once a week, and there’s expected to be six in total, as in previous series.
Where was season six filmed?
The Peaky Blinders cast in a previous series filming at Victoria Baths in Manchester. Credit: BBC
A lot of the scenes in the final instalment of Peaky Blinders were filmed right here in Manchester, despite the drama being based in Birmingham.
Huge sets were built around Castlefield, with the ancient cobbled streets transformed into both Chinatown and Small Heath.
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Crews even built a mock frontage for the Garrison pub, which is owned by the Shelby family.
Cillian Murphy was also spotted filming scenes on a narrowboat on the canals in Castlefield.
It’s not the first time the drama has visited our city – scenes from previous series were shot around Mangle Street, London Road Fire Station, Victoria Baths and Stockport Plaza.
What happened at the end of the last series?
If you haven’t watched season five yet – stop reading now, spoilers lie ahead.
It was an action-packed few weeks with the Shelby family, including plenty of sex, violence and politics.
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The season began with the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the decimation of the Shelby finances, which drives a huge wedge between Tommy and Michael (Polly’s son).
Meanwhile, Tommy is now MP for Birmingham South, and feeding information about fascist Oswald Mosley to British intelligence services.
At the end of the series, Tommy’s attempt to assassinate Mosley in an elaborate plan backfires, resulting in the death of Polly’s fiance Aberama Gold.
The bold cliffhanger saw Tommy’s PTSD in full, devastating effect, with the show’s star strolling into a field with a gun to his head.
Will he pull the trigger? We’ll soon find out.
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What has the creator said?
Steven Knight has confirmed that this will be the last series of Peaky Blinders, but a feature-length film is planned to properly tie things up.
In an interview with the BBC, Knight said: “I don’t want to give away any spoilers so I would just say: Tommy is about to face enemies and demons more powerful than anything he’s ever faced before.
“It’s the mid 1930s, fascism is on the rise, the Shelbys are more powerful than ever. But demons are coming to reclaim Tommy Shelby.
“What I’ve wanted from the beginning is to start off with a character who seems irredeemable. Who is switched off completely; whose humanity has been torn out of him by his experiences in the war.
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“And then slowly bring him back to life, to turn him back into a human being over the however many hours that we’ve done. And I think at the end of six, for all the bad things that he’s done, Tommy is a human being.”
Featured image: BBC
TV & Showbiz
Chris Pine took part in one of the north’s most infamous pub crawls… weirdly
Daisy Jackson
Hollywood star Chris Pine has revealed this week that he spent a year at uni up north – and even took part in one of the country’s most infamous pub crawls.
The Star Trek star was interviewed on Capital FM, where he touched on his memories of studying in Leeds, and on tackling the legendary student drinking challenge that is the Otley Run.
Chris Pine is an American actor best known for his roles as Jamie T. Kirk in Star Trek, Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman and Lord Devereaux in The Princess Diaries 2.
Appearing on Capital FM’s breakfast show this morning with Roman Kemp, Sian Welby and Chris Stark, Pine reminisced on his days studying in Yorkshire.
Kemp kicked off the show with “It’s Capital Breakfast and this morning we are joined by probably the only Hollywood A-lister to attend Leeds university.”
Chris Pine in Don’t Worry Darling. Credit: Warner Bros
“I don’t know, you’ll have to check the alumni book but I’m pretty sure that’s probably accurate” the actor admitted.
Pine explains that he studied in Leeds for one year as an exchange student, when he was just 19 years old.
Chris Stark quickly jumped in to ask Chris about the iconic Leeds student pub crawl, The Otley Run, and whether or not he’d done it as a young undergraduate.
“I don’t remember much of it but yes I have done it.”
“Do you remember what you wore?” Stark responds.
“No I don’t, I remember…nothing.”
Image: Esquire (via Twitter)
He admits that although the crawl consists of 18 bars, he himself has never made it to each one.
He continues to explain that although he now lives in sunny California and has done for most of his life, he in fact lived in the UK for a total of four years between the ages of 29 and 40.
“There’s so much Hollywood work over here but I have yet to go back to Leeds.
“I have all these memories. I lived on Brudenell road and I can see the market across the street and I know the walk to school and the great old cinema on the corner of Brudenell and Hyde Park. I just have these images of school there.”
Image: University of Leeds
So next time you’re wondering down Brudenell Road or catching a flick at Hyde Park Picture House, just know that those hallowed halls were once home to Hollywood royalty.
And who knows, Pine might be hopping on a plane to Leeds Bradford airport after being reminded of such happier times – so make sure to keep an eye out.
Paddy McGuinness teases potential return of Max and Paddy’s Road to Nowhere
Danny Jones
Right, we don’t mean to alarm you all, but Max and Paddy might finally be coming back after nearly 20 years.In other entirely unrelated news, there is a god.
We only ever got one solitary season of Max and Paddy’s Road to Nowhere, but it only took six episodes for it to leave us with lasting memories of rolling on the floor laughing and quoting lines all these years later.
The Phoenix Nights spin-off went on to be not just a cult favourite but an iconic British sitcom that rivalled the show that spawned it, cementing both Peter Kay and Paddy McGuinness as even greater household names than they already were.
Cut to nearly two nearly full decades later and Paddy himself has teased that the hit Northern comedy might not be done after all. Battle stations, people — we’re on the campaign trail now.
Speaking to Capital Breakfast this week, McGuinness came on to the subject of Max and Paddy return, saying that “the interesting thing about Max and Paddy, and Phoenix Nights is now, we are kind of all of an age of the people we played back then.”
He admitted that while they “do talk about it and what have you” and would love to see the full cast return someday, he just “can’t see it at the minute”.
However, he did go on to insist “never say never” and, more promisingly, that the comedy duo’s comeback, specifically, could very well be on the cards.
“Like Max and Paddy, for instance, we wrote a couple of Christmas specials, and we’ve still got them”, says McGuinness. “We never got around to doing one for whatever reason back in the day. But we’ve actually got them.”
The 49-year-old went on to clarify that more than one script has already been written for some time, but they’ve just been kept on the backburner given that he is admittedly “inherently lazy” and likes “doing as little as possible”, it just never came to fruition.
“If you’re doing a scripted comedy show, it does take a long time. So to do something like [this], you have literally got to blank out 12 months of your life.
“He [Kay] is on tour. I’ve got all kinds of stuff going on, and it’s just sort of going ‘right, let’s get together. Let’s get our diaries together. And let’s blank out for that time'”. We don’t know a single person that wouldn’t want to see a Max and Paddy return in some form.
While hosts Roman Kemp and Siân Welby urged people to get flooding them with texts and posting all over social media, the former Take Me Out presenter joked it “won’t make a blind bit of difference.” Come on, Paddy, don’t let us down now.
Daisy Jackson -
25th February 2022 
